New study reveals big gaps in governance across sports in Europe

A new and groundbreaking study maps governance standards in national sports federations across Europe. The report reveals significant shortcomings in many sports based on a new measuring tool, ‘The National Sports Governance Observer’.

With accelerating speed, the issue of good governance has climbed to the top of the sports political agenda over the past few years. Not only have corruption and crime cases involving international sports federations drawn worldwide attention. There is also a growing awareness that the failures of sports governance on a national and international level are systemic and undermine the legitimacy of sport.

Up until recently, focus has mostly been on governance in international sports federations, but a new and in many ways groundbreaking study examines the governance standards in eight or more sports in nine European countries plus Brazil.

The study has been carried out by academic researchers in all countries as part of the project ‘National Sports Governance Observer (NSGO)’, led by Arnout Geeraert from KU Leuven and Utrecht University and coordinated by Play the Game (see details in box below).

The mapping is done by using 274 individual indicators within four governance dimensions: Transparency, democratic processes, internal accountability and control, and societal responsibility.

The findings demonstrate that the degree of good governance in sports federations varies considerably across the ten countries (see figure 1).

Figure 1: Overall NSGO index scores – all countries

The average score of the NSGO country indexes of the nine European countries is 47%, which corresponds to a ‘moderate’ scoring label. Sports federations in Norway, Denmark, and the Netherlands mostly achieve ‘good’ to ‘very good’ scores. Flemish federations generally achieve average to good scores. The federations in the other countries achieve mostly average to ‘weak’ scores.

Achieving a low score does not automatically render a federation ineffective, illegitimate, or unethical. However, the weaker the score, the more vulnerable the federation, and Jens Sejer Andersen, international director of Play the Game, sees plenty of room for improvement:

“Sports leaders could do much more to secure transparency on financial issues and remuneration. They are reluctant to limit the time they stay in powerful positions, and conflicts of interest are largely ignored. There is little care for gender balance, and athletes are rarely consulted in any systematic way,” Andersen points out.

Concrete governance challengesTransparency is the dimension in which the nine European countries achieve the best average score namely 65% (good). It is followed by the democracy and accountability dimensions at 44% and 51%, respectively (moderate). The average NSGO score on the societal responsibility dimension is 38%, which corresponds to a ‘weak’ scoring label.

Figure 2: Average scores of the surveyed European countries and Brazil on the NSGO dimensions

Societal responsibility is an area a large majority of the federations struggle with. Most have their anti-doping policies in place (64%), but under-achieve with regard to environmental sustainability (19%), athletes’ rights (29%), gender equality (24%), anti-match-fixing (34%), and dual career policies (34%).

Among other concrete challenges are:

Even if transparency is the area where the federations perform best with a 65% average score, there is a large room for improvement. Less than a third of the national federations publish information on the remuneration of board members and top executives. And a very big minority (43%) does not publish an annual financial report on their website.

Conflicts of interest are largely neglected: Only 11% of the surveyed federations publish an (anonymised) overview on the declarations of conflicts of interest and the decisions in which conflicts of interest were involved. No more than 24% of the federations have conflict of interest rules that ensure that particular conflicts must be submitted to the general assembly.

Elections are generally held in accordance with well-defined procedures, but very few have policies to achieve a differentiated composition of the board (24%), term limits (31%), the involvement of athletes in policy processes (30%), and a gender equality policy (23%).

Whistleblowers enjoy very little protection in national federations even if in recent years they have been key to exposing scandals at the national and international level. Only 17% of the federations formally ensure that no person who reports a concern shall be subject to negative consequences.

Less than half of the federations have formulated objectives and actions aimed at mitigating the health risks of sporting activities. And just 15% have conducted an analysis of the specific health risks associated with their sport.

Shift in attitudesDespite the significant challenges in many national sports federations, Jens Sejer Andersen senses a shift in sports organisations’ attitudes towards reform:

“Only a few years ago, sports leaders would typically sit with their arms folded when governance was on the agenda. It has been very encouraging to experience first-hand that many national leaders now engage strongly and positively, looking for opportunities to improve their organisations,” he says.

Jens Sejer Andersen stresses that the 265 pages report does not pretend to give a full picture of the reality of sports organisations. The impact of rules and regulations depends at the end of the day on the human beings that administer them.

But according to Andersen, the NSGO raises a lot of political perspectives and specific information needed by those who wish to set the course for sport, and despite the fact that the EU support expires by the end of the year, Play the Game plans to continue and expand the use of the National Sports Governance Observer tool.

Play the Game is currently in the process of including Australia, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Lithuania, Peru, and the USA and invites interested parties from other countries to join the project as official partners.

Further reading

Guidelines for postingPlay the Game promotes an open debate on sport and sports politics and we strongly encourage everyone to participate in the discussions on playthegame.org. But please follow these simple guidelines when you write a post:

Please be respectful - even if you disagree strongly with certain viewpoints. Slanderous or profane remarks will not be posted.

Please keep to the subject. Spam or solicitations of any kind will not be posted.

About the NSGO project

The National Sports Governance Observer is a project coordinated by Play the Game/ Danish Institute for Sports Studies, which brought together academics and sports leaders from nine European countries well as Brazil. The project has received a 383,000 euro grant from the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union and further support from the Danish Parliament and the Council of Europe.

The main aim of the project was to assist and inspire national sports federations to enhance the quality of their governance by measuring governance and building capacity.

In order to do so, the researchers led by Arnout Geeraert from KU Leuven and Utrecht University first developed the National Sports Governance Observer tool with its 274 indicators describing 46 governance principles within four governance dimensions:

Transparency

Democratic processes

Internal accountability and control

Societal responsibility.

The tool was hereafter applied to eight or more sports federations in the individual countries. The countries involved are Cyprus, Denmark, Belgium (Flanders), Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Romania plus Brazil and Montenegro as associated external partners. Moreover, many federation leaders have committed time and expert knowledge to the project. The final report is edited and partly written by Arnout Geeraert with contributions from the individual partners.

The National Sports Governance Observer has received funding from the European Commission under the programme Erasmus+. The Commission is not responsible for any communication and publication by the project or any use that may be made from information contained therein.

The project partners

The following original full project partners conducted the academic research and produced national reports in their respective countries.

Danish Institute for Sports Studies/Play the Game

German Sport University Cologne

KU Leuven

Molde University College (MUC)

University of Bucharest

University of Warsaw

Utrecht University

The associate partners gave advice and assisted with the development and implementation of the indicators. They also disseminated the research findings.

Cyprus Sports Organisation (CSO)

Danish Football Association (DBU)

Enlarged Partial Agreement on Sport (EPAS), Council of Europe

European Association for Sport Management (EASM)

Flemish Sports Confederation (VSF)

International Council of Sport Science and Physical Education (ICSSPE)

Norwegian Football Association (NFF)

Polish Golf Union (PGU)

Romanian Football Federation (FRF)

In addition, thanks to earmarked subsidies from the Danish Parliament to support the work of Play the Game in the field of good governance, the following partners voluntarily joined the project and engaged with the research process.

Sou do Esporte (Brazil). Supported by Sport Intelligence Project of the Federal University of Paraná / Sport Ministry and Demarest

Marko Begovic, private researcher (Montenegro). Supported by the Council of Europe

University of Central Lancashire and Molde University College (MUC)

Use of cookies

The website www.playthegame.org uses cookies to provide a user-friendly and relevant website. Cookies provide information about how the website is being used or support special functions such as Twitter feeds.

By continuing to use this site, you consent to the use of cookies. You can find out more about our use of cookies and personal data in our privacy policy.